Kung Fu Forms, poetry and mnemonic devices.

The usefulness of forms (Chinese tohlo or Japanese kata) is often debated in Martial arts. Some consider them useless and for show. Some people only practice their forms like they are magical mantras that will bring about supernatural powers through their order of techniques, like chanting a spell or prayer. Some people just like them.
I used to be of the opinion that forms were like a book. Some of them were like boring manuals, a how to for fighting. Some were manuals that were decorated with fancy gold margins and in a more poetic form. Some were like a story, a poem, in fact a lot of moves have corresponding four syllable poetic lines associated with them.
Al this is true, but recently I missed something in my need to categorize a physical and oral history into the written history I was more familiar with. The missed the mnemonic device hidden in the forms. Mainly because since I was part of a school for a long period of time, I didn't need this device. But watching a series on brain function on Nova opened my eyes to this. Basically there were these memory contests where peopl could memorize vast pages of number sequences, (the host did a list of 40 words instead) in a matter of minutes. The trick with the words was the went around the room looking at different objects to use and then say if the words were "monkey, house, bicycle" the person doing the memorizing would picture a monkey riding a bicycle crashing into a house. The more unusual the action the more it would stick out in your brain.
Aha! I thought. All those poetic names of Kung Fu moves had a purpose other than to sound cool or confuse and awe a student whose chinese was sub par.
I'll give an example of a story.
One of Bak Mei students (pro Qing government) travelled up to White Crane mountain looking for some Shaolin rebels(anti-Qing government) who were hiding out with Woo Dak Dai (anti-Qing or neutral depending who you ask. Founder of our White Crane's Shaolin branch/ possibly one of the Five ancestors depending on who you ask) Anyway, he bumped into a white crane student they got into it, Kung fu fighting on the side of a mountain and what not then..
Bak Mei studdnet...did a  "duk pak wa san!" (uhhhh hammer fist chops into the Wa San mountain range!"
Pause
Okay so you can't actually use the back of your fist to chop and explode an entire mountain range. Though movies often have Kung Fu fighter do just that, through CGI and other special effects.
Start

The the White crane student quickly reacted with "Wu deep cuen jerng!" Butterfly fist palm! (uhh not that bad ass sounding at all) and passed the Bak Mei technique and then "Mang Fu toi San!" Fierce Tiger pushes the mountain.
end

Okay so butterflies don't have fists, nor do Fierce tigers go around pushing mountains from here to there. So what is the point of these names. (What is the real point of this story? Not the plot. A rather unknown WHite crane student kills justifibly defending himself and home and invader who we know is a Bak Mei student. But the Bak Mei student falls off a mountain and the White Crane student is unknown so ho is telling the story?)

This story actually has the applications to three techniques right? Americans are always asking about, when do I get to learn the real applications, I don't want to learn forms all day for ten years, I'm not all Shaolin Temple and stuff. And I don't need to know all this flowery language and story telling, I want to know the real street applications.
Okay, in Shaolin Temple they don't need forms because they have ten years. Forms or for the street. Not street fighting, but street learning.
(As an aside. When my Sifu taught me applications for fighting, that was often a much different experience and conversation then when teaching a technique as it appeared in the form. In the form would start off with more simile, "like a rhino looking at the moon" or "like two people are here and you jump up and strike both of them!" but the tone is like talking to a child. Where as a street application lesson the techniques are less clear than they appear in the form and more maleable and the conversation more violent and less Childlike in nature.)
Where was I? Street learning.
I bumped into a Kung Fu Clasmate I haven't seen in half a decade yesterday and the conversation went to how a certain form looked. So we went over to Copley Square and I showed him the form. I mean I performed it in front of him in a few minutes. Now, he hasn't been training as much, he has become an M.D, since I last saw him, but let's go back to two hundred years ago in China. Everyone had exposure to Kung Fu from a young age, and everyone spoke Chinese and knew various street poems and oral history (not a lot of people could read) and they were familiar with these oral and physical oral traditions often performed on street corners for money, or kept in secret and used as codes to identify various secret societies, gangs, political interest groups etc.
The point is, even today, people who practice Kung fu all the time, especially when passing on a form of the same system can learn a form in a day. I learned the particular form I was performing on Copley Square in two days. 10 minutes each day, enough time for my son to start playing with the swords So basically 20 minutes. Now I haven't focused all my training on this for so it is a little hazy, but I can do it pretty well still even though I haven't been training forms in their story poem fullness that much since I have to keep both eyes on my very curious 20 month old.
But basically this form is easily passed along from one Kung Fu guy of System A to another Kung Fu guy of system A. Even System B guy might be able to pick it up if System B is a close cousin to System A.
Forms around about wasting your time, Their about saving it. You can meet up with a Kung Fu guy walking on the road, learn the form in Five minutes, and then break it apart. All the techniques can turn into thousands of techniques and training methods, whole fighting styles, there are combinations, Yoga like postures to hold, that you will under stand at a glance if you have the proper physical and mental foundation.
It is easier to memorize this series of techniques is it goes in a poetic like order with a dance like flow to it. The Sing-songy four syllable poems depicting impossible human strength and shape shifting (duk pak wa san, Mang fu toi san) are another layer of mnemonic devices to help you recall what you are doing, what the next move is. In fact these poems change and there's no reason why you can't make up your own in English.
Here is an example of a modern one There are some moves hands or swords held up in a fighting form that taken as pcitures by themselves, may vaguely resemble someone surrendering. (it doesn't look like surrender when done in the form because he is still fighting) (Don't make fun now, I've seen boxers do similar moves and they have names like "cuteness" or "peekaboo" also used to help refer to various fighting styles. So don't start calling the kettle black you MMA people you.)
The move is now called surrender, but in politically incorrect and economically depressed China it was called "Yup buen Jai Tau Wong!" or The Japanese Surrender. Just saying that these mnemonic devices and poems didn't suddenly stop changing and developing just because China modernized.
So, work hard on your basics and use these mnemonic devices to learn Kung Fu fast. Kung Fu is hard work, but that doesn't mean it is arduous and slow. There are built in tricks to make things easier and faster and more entertaining as well.